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Experts warn of Love Bug variant

Infected 'love letters' are dropping back into inboxes once again as the recent spate of socially engineered viruses continues. This time, a modified version of the infamous Love Bug is doing the rounds, masquerading as an animated picture of someone's new baby.

Infected 'love letters' are dropping back into inboxes once again as the recent spate of socially engineered viruses continues. This time, a modified version of the infamous Love Bug is doing the rounds, masquerading as an animated picture of someone's new baby.

Antivirus experts have pointed out that the newly discovered 'Myba' virus is really just a modified version of the Visual Basic script that made up the Love Bug code and is identical in many ways.

The virus arrives as an executable attachment on an email with the subject line: 'My Babypic'. The message body text reads: 'It's my animated baby picture!!!', and the attachment is MYBABYPIC.EXE.

If the file is executed, a picture of a baby pops up and when this is closed the virus copies itself to the Windows/System directory several times, and adds a number of registry entries allowing it to execute at Windows boot up. The virus also redistributes itself to all the email addresses found in the Outlook address book, unbeknown to the user.

The virus has already been spotted in the wild and its actual payload has been labelled as "very dangerous" by Eugene Kaspersky, head of Kaspersky antivirus labs. It has been given a medium level warning by another antivirus firm, Trend Micro.

"Myba carries a very dangerous payload that can easily destroy important data on your computer," said Kaspersky. "Depending on the current time and date it can switch on or off NumLock, CapsLock and ScrollLock keys."

He explained that the virus also sends the message '.IM_BESIDES_YOU_' to the keyboard buffer, then connects to the website www.youvebeenhack.com and sends one of the following text messages: 'FROM BUGGER', 'HAPPY VALENTINES DAY FROM BUGGER' or 'HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM BUGGER'.